It is halfway through its third year of existence and a lot has happened in 2.5 years. In the first six months of 2023, TechMeUp has worked hard to provide interest-free loans to as many students as possible. As a result they are financially able to provide loans to more students and they were able to deploy more manpower as a result.
TechMeUp shares their results and activities of the first half of the year:
Media coverage of the company as well as the students
TechMeUp remains visible in the media. The NRC, for instance, published a nice interview with Nikky Hofland (director TechMeUp) and Begum Eryildiz (student TechMeUp). They talked about the shortage of women in IT and the role we as a society can play in this. Proudly, they can say that at TechMeUp, 63% of all students are still female.
TechMeUp reached another milestone in June: they supported the 200th student with a loan. More than half of all TechMeUp students have now graduated and 70% of them now have jobs in IT. In this first semester, they provided interest-free loans to 66 students. That's almost double the number of loans granted in the first half of last year.
Scaling up in team and trainers
In April, the TechMeUp Team expanded with an additional full time project leader. Thanks to the arrival of Hisham al Hashemi, they can now provide even faster and more students with financial support. They also linked two new educators, Daatlab & SALT, to TechMeUp this year. They are in contact with several more trainers, possibly linking them in the second half of this year.
'The first step' campaign
In the first quarter of this year, they launched the 'The First Step' campaign in collaboration with Techgrounds. With this campaign, they tried to give a friendly nudge to anyone still hesitating to retrain towards IT. With a bus shelter campaign, a video and posts on social media, we highlighted the advantages of switching to a career in IT.
Besides the media attention, TechMeUp were also nominated for Omarm Prize (vote here: -> - https://lnkd.in/gGQfQA5) and the Computable Award 2023 (vote here: → https://lnkd.in/eTx4ekKm) in the Sustainability & CSR category. In October, they will hear whether they won the awards.
